US grapples with another deadly winter storm

The United States has been hit with another deadly winter storm that began in some parts of the country on Thursday.

The National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center said in a tweet on Friday that a trail of freezing rain, snow and sleet over 2,000 miles long stretched between Texas and the Northeast, with a cold weekend expected.

The National Weather Service said on Friday that snowfall in some of the eastern region’s impacted states was as high as 17 inches. 

At least two people in Texas died during the winter storm, including a woman who was found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning and another person who succumbed to their injuries following a jackknife crash on Interstate 10, The New York Times reported.

The storm led to widespread flight cancellations and left tens of thousands without power. The newspaper noted that close to 4,000 flights were canceled on Friday, citing the airline tracking website FlightAware, and that more than 250,000 businesses and homes had lost power by Friday night.

More than 90 million people were under a winter weather advisory or warning, CNN reported.

By Thursday morning alone, close to 70,000 people in Texas were without power, but that number later dropped to less than 20,000 by Friday night, the Times noted. 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said during a news conference earlier this week that he could not guarantee that there would not be outages.

“No one can guarantee that there won’t be a ‘load shed event.’ But what we will work and strive to achieve, and what we’re prepared to achieve, is that the power is gonna stay on across the entire state,” Abbott said during a Tuesday news conference, referring to rolling blackouts.

Only a week ago a handful of governors had declared states of emergency as they braced for severe winter weather that predominantly hit the East Coast.